Did I mention I was British?

Two weeks ago, my brand spanking new British passport arrived. I was well chuffed. Thanks, Mum and Dad. The paper work was interesting, You can only get an ancestry British citizenship by

A) Having a father who was British at my birth (he's a Yank now, has been since the sixties) - By the way if you were born before 1980 you could only be British through your Dad not your Mum, interesting huh? So you need his birth certificate.

B) Having a mother who was married to your father. So you need their marriage certificate.

C) Having me. So you need your birth certificate.

Then you fill out a lot of scary forms and have someone who is "professional" counter sign your form saying they have known you for some number of years. In my case it was a friend from work who has a PhD in Urban Morphology, he gets to be called Dr. Jones. and that Dr. preface means he gets to co-sign my application. Better than the registered landscape architect I was going togo with, right?

Then you send all that off with your existing US passport (eek - I was without a passport for weeks!). I will get the US passport back because technically I am a dual citizen. After the required amount of time they send you a letter and tell you show up at a dodgy part of town (in my case Hannibal House at Elephant and Castle) where you have an interview and "prove" you are who you said you were. Couple of scary moments in the interview when they asked me my phone number. Shit, I've never known my phone number. I use my work number for everything because I can remember it. So I told the interviewer, I could never remember my mobile number and I could do parts of it and proceeded to ramble off some familiar sounding numbers. Apparently I got pretty close. Next slip up was when I started rattling off my Dad's birthday instead of my Mum's. Then I switch to my sisters in stead of My Mum. Ack, panic - was she the 6 or the 7, franticly counting the days between Christmas and 12th night which is the only way I can remember it. Oh, I'm fluffing this. Ask me about direct labour rates, gross or net contribution or what percentage of our net rev goes towards fringe benefits - don't ask me phone numbers and birthdays and expect an answer without the help of supporting documentation. Whew, they let me go and told me I would hear from them in 4 to 10 days.

Five days later I get a piece of paper at my home telling me to arrange a delivery, which I do for the next day at the office. Then I hang around near my desk or go to meetings clutching my mobile so the deliver company can reach me because I have to prove to the delivery boy that I am the to whom he should be delivering the package. That's it. Some sweaty bicycle delivery guy looks at me looks at my California drivers license then hands me an envelope. I rip it open hoping its the passport and not a rejection letter. It is! It is a pleathery red square-ish block with biometric chip and antennae (!?) and additional pages for those traveling folks. I'm in! I can go and live anywhere in the European Union. I don't have to get stopped, questioned and frisked at small airports in France. I can go to CUBA! I can go anywhere because the Queen says so inside the front cover.

Best of all I don't have to get another work permit because my first one runs out next week. So what have I done with my new found freedom? Nothing. I've taken the 168 bus from the Royal Free Hospital stop on Haverstock hill to Southhampton Row and then walked to Clerkenwell Road and left onto Hatton Garden to work. All I need now is a bowler hat and a black umbrella to be the perfect British worker bee.

To celebrate, I have begun using the words "crikey" and "bother" as often as possible in everyday speech.

End of Summer BBQ

On last bank holiday of the summer - sort of the equivalent to Labor Day in US - I took a couple of days off and lazed around. It was lovely. By Monday I was ready to see some folks and invited some Australian friends over for a BBQ, which I had been threatening to do for some time. Unfortunately I didn't have a BBQ, but had seen these clever disposable things in grocery stores. So I headed out to check out the newly revamped Sainsbury's on Finchley Road. Sainsbury's is basically like Publix - its an upper-mid market grocery store with everything. I am a Waitrose shopper, which is like saying I'm a Whole Foods shopper - it implies you are idiot who pays too much for your food, but the stores are smaller and are more to shop in because they are less like bus stations.

ANYWAY, I headed out for the newly refurbished Sainsbury's and had that feeling I usually get when I walk into store of over 200,000 SF, "would I ever really need a grocery store this big?" There are aisles with nothing in them but canned food. The aisle are so long that you can see the curvature of the earth. They had a season aisle - always a favourite for me. What will the season aisle bring? IN this case it was a decimated aisle of summer-like products; sunscreen, unbreakable plastic products, very breakable chairs, sun umbrellas, a smattering of garden related implements, slug pellets, compost, and etc. They also were having an end of the season sale on disposable BBQ - two sizes small and family size. They are aluminum (or aluminium as we say here in the Great British Isles) trays with flammable briquets leashed in the tray under a sort-of-grill thing. You put it on its cute little stand which is made of something like a wire coat hanger. Then it requires that you place it on a non-flammable surface. Tough to do in my back yard since its all paved in railroad ties (known as sleepers here). So I rigged up a table with a big tray and balanced on the tray is a big slab of slate that usually holds cheese at dinner parties.

I was really pleased (chuffed) at how cleverly I rigged up the grilling gadget. I thought even my "of-shore ready" sister would have found my improvisation acceptable. Everything went off like a charm, the BBQ worked great, we had great burgers that tasted like they had been grilled. Good thing I bought three of those disposable BBQs

This truck is wearing a skirt.

Driving between Abu Dhabi and Dubai means you spend a lot of time sitting around staring at the traffic surrounding you. This back of this truck really caught my eye. sorry about the poor quality of the picture, but if you look below the bumper you will notice that there is a colourful layer of chains (?) hanging from the bumper. I assume its like a mud guard of some kind. It was quite mesmerising to just watch it sway and simmer in the heat while we sat there. The truck was pretty interesting, too. Look at the detail in the rails on the sides of the bed. Very heavily detailed. A bit over the top for a working vehicle but nicely grand, I think.

Believe it or not this was the view from my room at the Shangra-La hotel in Abu Dhabi. This is the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan Grand Mosque. Third largest Mosque in the world after Mecca and Medina. I was AD and Dubai for a work project it was hot hot hot. so I didn't really spend a lot of time looking out of my rooms windows. But finally after my last of three days locked up in airconditioned meeting rooms, I went out on the rooms balcony and turned to the right. OMG, I nearly fell over the railing. The sun was setting and the white structure was just glowing. Its really huge.

Quite a sight.

This is the other view

This is the view you see when you look straight out the window. Really nice and luxurious. Just to put in contact though it was something like 45 Celsius that day (wow, I just looked that up and its 113 F).

Not a bad view, but its nothing compared to the Mosque.

Funny that the minute I start blogging again...

my internet connection starts to get all flaky on me. I can only get online every so often. Makes no sense. Ever since I moved to SF in 2003, I've bundled phone, internet and cable. These bundled services have been remarkably stable. I rarely lose connections, could be because I moved away from the horrendous storms of the south east United States and there fore just had less lightning, hurricanes and tornadoes to contend with. So I notice it much more when I cannot get online.

Think about all the things you do with the internet these days. Want to find out what time the movies starts, the population of Doha, the correct way to set a table, the phone number for pizza delivery, what people are saying about your blog... all require a decent internet connection.

*****HUGE DIGRESSION my spell check thinks internet should be spelled Internet, with a capital "I". What do you think about that?*****

So as any red blooded liberal would now likely comment, gosh, we really need to make sure more folks get access to th einternet so they can join the early 21st Century.

Enough said, I'm currently back on line so I'm going to post a slew of things.

Arthur's Seat with Mum and Dad

So far behind! I never posted this picture of Edinburgh's Arthur's Seat hill. Mum, Dad and I climbed (ok its a walk but it felt like a climb) it when they came to visit in April! Love this picture, because we got very close to the top and I just petered out. Mum kept on for a while further - that's her seated on the boulder in the foreground, left hand side. Dad, feeling he had to accomplish it, went all the way to the top. He is one of those specks you see in the upper left corner on the out cropping. It was a very cold day especially for the Floridians but it was really great.

We ended the day at a pub in Leith, watching a semi contentious football game between rivals. Luckily we had no idea who either side was so we just went ahead and cheered for the team the whole pub was rooting for and made lots of friends.

Now I'm just rambling, aren't I?

Did a lot of knitting this spring and summer

what the hell, I've already shown you my cats. I might as well show you the knitting I've been doing this summer and really seal my reputation as a swinging London chick - Not. I bought this lovely yarn in Edinburgh on a trip the first Fall I was was here. Its been one of those projects you just keep plugging away at - not thinking just sitting there watching re-runs of Inspector Morse, or Midsummer Murders or some other total murder mystery tele.

The Longer I live in England the more I find I am actually becoming Miss Marple. I guess that's no surprise since I was into mysteries and knitting before moving but now I find its all coalescing into a potential Agatha Christie plot.

Good thing, too, otherwise life would be very dull.

Fingerless gloves

Its cold here so when I'm bogged down in the middle of a big project I like to whip out something small and fun. These green fingerless Gloves (hand warmers?) were really fun to make with cables and ribbing and thumbs. Lots of things to pay attention to - can only listen to Radio 4 not watch old tv when you are working on something like this.

Dylan in repose

Don't know why I find it necessary to post pictures of my cat - but I do. This is Dylan looking regal in my living room-actually here its known as my reception room - doesn't that sound more regal? It also gives you a pretty good view of my bookshelves. Makes me look really intellectual doesn't it? Don't be fooled, its all a front.

Anyway, Dylan has had kind of a rough summer. I traveled a lot in July and August and he was pretty pissed off. He's 19 years old and expects better treatment than to be left home with only his companion, Morgana (a spry 17 years old) for company. He has started to get very thin - which is very unlike him. He was a robust two year old, 18 pound alley cat, when I adopted him in 1992. Now he's just an old gentleman cat who likes his food and water and a warm lap.

Dubai in July

sorry sorry sorry for those of you who keep tuning in and I have nothing posted.

Its been a long summer and I have been a lazy sod. But I'm back and now I am going to fillin some of the gap since I last wrote in July - oh how can it have been July.

Anyway, This was the view from my enormous room in Dubai. I as there on a business trip and completely flummoxed by the scale of everything. As you may remember I was in Abu Dhabi previously, which was odd enough but Dubai is fiercely growing. This is the main road along which most of the tall towers you hear about are gathered. Its a nightmare to cross, the older part of town, around Dubai Creek, is pretty interesting - although the picture in the link makes it look a lot like Hong King but its really much less urban. On the part of the creek were I had dinner it was very low scale and small boats transport people back and forth.

Definately worth going to the small but interesting Dubai Museum. To see how houses were made before oil.